General Physical Preparation

Hello All, 

General Physical Preparation, or GPP is a misunderstood factor in most health and fitness programs. We often see GPP referenced in texts on Periodization as the first stage of conditioning. I consider GPP work to be non specific activity that improves your level of conditioning and fitness. This kind of work improves physical capabilities in a way that carries over to all areas of fitness and to a great extent, everyday life.

Workouts performed that fall under the guise of GPP can be anything! Tools I have successfully used include kettle bells, club bells, body weight, barbells, dumbbells, medicine balls, sandbags, sleds, sledgehammers and cars! Anything can be used as an effective tool for GPP and the more varied, the better! I will now give you a few GPP workouts to fit in to your workout routine. They are best placed on days you have scheduled off from your regular exercise routine as a means of recovery by promoting blood flow to the muscles. They can also be put on the end of a workout after your main conditioning work.

Kettle bell GPP workout: This can also be performed with a barbell or dumbbells. Perform 5 reps of each exercise and then move into the next one. A full set is 25 reps. Rest and then repeat 1-3 times. Exercises that work great include - 

Snatch x5

Clean and Press x5

Front Squat x5

Romanian Dead Lift x5

Bent Over Row x5

These will fire up your heart rate and melt fat! Another option is:

Snatch x5

Overhead Squat x5

Squat Push Press x5

Front Squat x5

Romanian Dead lift with bent Over Row x 5

The second option is the more challenging one of the two. A great body weight workout could be something like this:

10 Body weight squats

10 Push Ups

10 Lunges each leg

10 inverted rows

Repeat 10x

This workout will challenge your whole body. To increase the challenge, record how long it takes you to complete the workout. Try to beat it every time you perform it. 

A great sandbag workout i picked up is from The Complete Sandbag Training Course by Brian Jones. He calls this workout the Atlas workout Perform this exercise in a circuit format with 45 seconds rest between exercises

Sandbag Squats (15 each shoulder)

Sandbag Push Jerks - 5 reps

Sandbag Upright Rows - 5 reps

Walk 20 meters holding the sand bag over your head then perform a Turkish Get Up with each arm. Repeat 4 times. Rest 90 secondss. The key is not to to let the sand bag fall below your head. You can put it down when you rest.

The last GPP workout for today is using a car! A training partner is required to hit the brakes and control the steering wheel if things start going pear shaped! From experience (painful experience) I have found automatic gear boxes better. 

The first step is to find a quiet street with a small incline. Pick a distance of around 75 meters and push the car! ideally you want to use good posture and a nice position with your upper body leaning about 45 degrees forward. when you get to your target distance the driver should bring the car back to the start. The pattern i use initially is Push, rest 3 minutes, push, rest 2 minutes, push rest 1 minute and then push once more. This workout gets the quadriceps absolutely screaming and severe burning in the lungs if you are unfit. If this method is practiced with nasal breathing you will be strong!! One funny thing that happens with this training is people stopping to help you because they think you may have had a breakdown!

I hope these ideas have inspired you to do something new and different with your training and I will be posting many more of these training ideas in the future!!

Paul

'The future depends on what we do in the present'

Gandhi 

Insulin and Health

Hello again,

Today we are going to talk about a serious issue that is affecting society. The issue is insulin resistance. As we all know, insulin resistance leads to Type II Diabetes which is one of the biggest killers today. This issue is primarily due to lifestyle factors which can easily be altered. 

The main factor in any insulin problem is carbohydrates. Over consumption of refined carbohydrates and refined sugars lead to a massive spike in blood sugar and a massive release in insulin. This eventually does two main things: it wears out the insulin producing Beta cells of the Pancreas and also leads to the cellular membranes of the body becoming no-responsive to insulin. An analogy is to think of what happens to you when the phone constantly rings. After a while, the majority of us will ignore the call. The cells of the body are the same. If they keep on getting signals from insulin they will soon ignore those signals.

Other factors contribute to this as well. Hyperventilation can also lead to insulin resistance as well. One of the key factors with insulin sensitivity (how well your cells respond to insulin) is the amount of blood that gets to the cells. When we over breathe what happens is that the oxygen molecules bind too tightly to the hemoglobin in the blood and cannot diffuse efficiently into the cellular machinery. This lack of oxygen and blood flow then sets up the stage for insulin resistance.

Another issue is the quality of the meat we are eating. The meat we currently consume has a much higher ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 than it did as little as one hundred years ago. This is due to poor industrial farming techniques such as feeding the animals grains and soybeans which they are not suited for. Grass fed animals and wild game such as venison have a much higher Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio and are therefore better choices. Omega 3 fatty acids help insulin resistance by making the cell membrane more permeable so more nutrients can get in. 

A lack of exercise is a contributing factor as well. Over two thirds of the population do not get anywhere near enough exercise. If any medicine or pill had the same benefits as exercise it would immediately be labelled the greatest drug ever made. Exercise directly contributes to the reduction of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, strokes and any other illness we can think of. The best form of exercise for insulin resistance is not cardiovascular training but rather resistance training. Resistance training increases blood flow to the muscles and also increase lean muscle mass, both of which improve insulin resistance.

Nutrition as we know plays a few roles and there are a few simple steps that we can take to help with insulin resistance. Fish oil supplementation is an excellent method and has far too many benefits to list here. Other factors too look at include reducing the amounts of carbohydrates in the diet. I also like taking a glass of water with a tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar 15 minutes before a meal. This has the second effect of improving digestion.  Another supplement that has proven useful has been combining evening primrose oil with Alpha Lipoic Acid. 

With exercise the best option as I said before was resistance training. A good programming structure would be full body workouts, 3-4 times a week alternating an upper body with a lower body exercise. Compound exercises such as squats, dead lifts and push ups would be the best choices as they use a large degree of muscle mass. Rest periods should be short, 45 seconds or less to allow an incomplete recovery. Tempo wise it is a good idea to have a controlled eccentric (lowering phase) of 3-4 seconds and an explosive concentric (lifting) phase. Reps should fall in the muscular endurance category of 10-15 reps. This should be combined with nasal breathing to allow optimal blood flow and prevent the release of cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone and when that is released in excess it leads to problems with blood sugar levels which again compromise insulin.

Emotionally insulin issues relate to the Solar Plexus Chakra or Manipura. This Chakra relates to our self esteem, personal power, will and how we see ourselves in the world. Quite often, feelings of low self esteem lead to eating comfort foods, such as ice cream and chocolate which are full of sugar. Building strength, muscle mass and improving posture through a good exercise program and diet are good steps to improve our self esteem and sense of personal power. What I often do with clients who have insulin resistance issues is perform a Kinesiology treatment on them to get to the root cause of their low self esteem. What i often see is that these problems often extend back to childhood or school. After correcting these issues, I see a massive improvement in Insulin sensitivity. Some clients lose 5 kilos after a week with a balanced Solar Plexus Chakra! Other methods that are useful are counseling, meditation and the internal martial arts such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong.

So if you believe insulin resistance is an issue that is stopping you from achieving your health goals these following steps can be followed to help you:

1. Supplement with fish oil and Apple Cider Vinegar as directed

2. Begin a resistance training program using the above guidelines and nasal breathing.

3. Eliminate refined sugars and carbohydrates from your diet. This includes breads, pastas, rice cakes and other refined baked goods.

4. Work on underlying issues of low self esteem and personal power. Work through them yourself with some of the methods above or find a good practitioner to help you understand yourself and work through the issue.

Until next time, good luck on the journey!

Paul

'The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear' 

Socrates

   

Happy New Year!

Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had a fantastic new years and Christmas! 2009 is a going to be a big year at DC Health as we have some very exciting new developments that will be announced in the next few months. Get ready to learn a lot this year!

With the new year we see people getting on the bandwagon and setting goals that are unrealistic and not likely to be achieved. This is the time of year of fad diets, intense exercise programs with no balance or thought and the quitting of addictions. The sad thing is that only 12% of these people ever achieve their goals and follow through on their resolutions.

I am not a goal setting expert not a motivational guru. What I want to address when looking at these shocking statistics is some of the inherent reasons why these people fail with goals and what things we really need to look at to achieve our goals from a physical standpoint.

Many people vow to lose weight every year. Quite often they will start a fad diet, such as a protein shake diet or lemon detox or some other ridiculous diet. What they need to look at first before is the fundamentals of healthy eating and nutrition. With every single client I see the key is not a miracle supplement of diet plan, it is the following of time tested and true principles that work. before you attempt any diet these are the principles you should follow:

1. Eat every 2-3 hours, no matter what. You should eat between 3-6 meals per day.

2. Eat complete (containing all the essential amino acids), lean protein with each meal.

3. Eat fruits and/or vegetables with each food meal.

4. Ensure that your carbohydrate intake comes from fruits and vegetables. Exception: workout and post-workout drinks and meals.

5. Ensure that 25-35% of your energy intake comes from fat, with your fat intake split equally between saturates (e.g. animal fat), monounsaturates (e.g., olive oil), and polyunsaturates (e.g. flax oil, salmon oil).

6. Drink only non-calorie containing beverages, the best choices being water and green tea.

7. Eat mostly whole foods

This is simple advice. When i give this advice many people say to me, 'well I already knew that'. The question I often throw back at them is 'well, why aren't you doing that'?. Talk about seeing a rabbit in the headlights!

The second area I like to address is exercise. Many people throw themselves into high intensity and density exercise programs with no regards to their physiological load (total amount of stress their body is under), joint health, previous training history or current medical conditions! To not get your body checked out and assessed by a professional blows my mind! To give you an analogy, if you went on a plane and the pilot just decided to go for it and take off without a pre-flight check you might be a little concerned! This however is what I see every day.

One simple pre-flight check that you can do on yourself is to test your respiratory efficiency. This is one of the key elements of program design as how well you breathe dictates how you can and should train. The test is simple; simply go for a walk and count how many steps you can take per one full inhale and exhale through your nose only. if you can achieve over 18 steps this is a good sign. If you cannot however it tells me that your breathing and physiology are comprised in a way that will seriously hamper your results. The best thing to do with starting a program is never go over 50% intensity and never train past your nasal breathing threshold. If you lose the ability to nasal breathe comfortably you are trying too hard.

This vital step covers many bases. It prevents post worout soreness and fatigue. It should help you finish exercise feeling energized, not drained, improve your stress levels and make exercise fun! I believe one of the main reasons people drop out of exercise is that it is not fun! If we have fun we are more than likely to stick to it. The second reason is that it is too hard. This nasal breathing technology helps take exercise out of the 'too hard basket' and puts you back in a place where you control the intensity.

I hope with these suggestions you can hopefully end up with the 12% of people who successfully achieve their new years goals. I will tackle the nature of addictions in a separate post as it is a very complex topic.

Till next time, Paul

'Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking'
Albert Einstein